Equipment units such as air conditioning condenser units and heat pumps are commonly used to heat and cool homes and small commercial buildings. Typically, these and other equipment units may be installed about an exterior of a home or a building adjacent to the ground. So that the equipment unit is above ground level, out of the way of water and landscaping, the equipment unit may be installed on an equipment pad.
Some equipment pads are created directly onsite using concrete. The concrete is mixed, poured, and left to cure before the equipment unit is installed. Thus, installing the equipment unit on a poured concrete pad may require multiple trips to the job site over several days, which may be undesirable. To reduce the delay, the concrete pad may be pre-fabricated offsite and shipped to the location where needed. However, the weight of the concrete pad may make shipping the pad prohibitively expensive and may also increase the labor costs associated with installation.
For these and other reasons, lightweight equipment pads have been developed as alternatives to concrete pads. Lightweight pads include plastic pads and concrete-covered foam pads. When a lightweight pad is used, the pad may be anchored to the ground using a separate anchoring system. The anchoring system prevents the pad from shifting, but increases the cost of installation.
The use of lightweight pads may be prohibited by law in some areas. For example, unanchored lightweight pads cannot be used in some areas of south Florida, where hurricane force winds are expected. In this and other instances, a concrete pad may be used, necessitating the delay associated with fabricating the pad directly onsite or the cost associated with pre-fabricating the pad offsite.
From the above, it is apparent that a need exists for systems and methods of elevating an equipment unit off of the ground. The systems and methods described below address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.